Blowing goat

I'm on a year-end shopping spree. I wander from store to store, checking out the merchandise. I take my items to the dressing room, stand before the mirror, and see how they look on me. I remove my clothes, press the new items against my nakedness, and see how they feel. How they make me feel.

Do they distract me?
Do they make me laugh?
Do they make me stop crying?

They say don't buy something new unless you can discard something old. I'm really not ready to discard something old. But I do seem to have lost something. And my heart is empty.

I wonder if I can rent to own, wear some of my choices for a few weeks, see if they grow on me.

You can't do that with clothes.
You can do that with men.

They are certainly ready to try me on.

I went back to the well. I went back to craigslist. After all, it worked last time. I used the same ad as last time. Except I put in a few more obvious references to BDSM. At least I thought they were more obvious...

It's odd... last time the 3 best responses were all from doms. They were beautiful, they had this tension, they drew me in... a few were from guys trying to date me, none very interesting, and then there were a number of fairly crassly sexual content that weren't well written at all. I really wanted nothing more than a correspondence, and I ended up with... well you know how it ends.

This time there are all these guys looking for relationships. Which is fine with me. That is ultimately what I am after. But NO ONE has written anything that compares to what I received last time from either dominick or harry or my red-haired philosopher. Though one guy sent me a string of bawdy rhymed couplets that could have been written centuries ago. He wants to take me out for coffee. Going straight for the sex is also an option, but I told him I'd stick with the coffee for now.

They send me pictures, these men. They are very visual, men are, and don't understand that sometimes it's better to spring the trap with words before letting me see how ordinary they look. On the other hand, there's this one guy.... black, 38, tall... I did tell him how old I am, he doesn't care, and the picture... I didn't want to embarrass him, I didn't want to embarrass myself, so I didn't tell him that I was drooling over it... meanwhile the couplet writer is an artist and photographer and around my age and I have suspicions that he could be a bit dominant in bed...

So OK, fine, sure, I'm amusing myself, I'm distracting myself. And then, this one guy who has been sending me poetry (uh-oh, here it comes) made references to "Some snippet from a past philosopher or poet", and "images of a broken heart", and I burst into tears.

It is all an illusion.

And yeah, you're right, Elspeth, it blows goat. But it's been 5 months now, 5 months since he broke up with me, and I see no reason to believe that one day he will finish the dissertation and say "There, kitten. I'm done. Let's pack up the cats and move to somewhere pretty and sunny. The cats will somehow get along, and so will we. So will we."

I'm trying my best to give up hope.
But this is the Age of Obama.
There is always Hope.

In the end, of course,
I'm not the only one shopping.
I placed my ad, end of season
markdowns, merchandise returned,
repriced for rapid clearance,
slightly irregular,
ragged round the edges,
you'll hardly see the
tear stains as long as you
never
say a word
about philosophers
or broken hearts.